Kalshi's board says Ohio State has a 52 percent chance of reaching the College Football Playoff semifinals. If you own that contract and want out this morning, the best offer anyone has posted is 43.
That nine-cent gap is the distance between a number the screen calculated for you and a number somebody will actually pay, and the bid holding up Ohio State's side is backed by 0.59 of a contract — about 25 cents of one person's money.
Thirty-two of the 50 teams on this board have no bid at all. Their prices exist only as offers nobody has met.
The Board Today
Read September 21, 2026. Lifetime volume about $530,000. Thirty-two of the 50 contracts carry no bid at all.
| Team | Chance | Buy | Bid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ohio St. | 52% | 51¢ | 43¢ |
| Texas | 51% | 50¢ | 45¢ |
| Notre Dame | 47% | 46¢ | 44¢ |
| Indiana | 46% | 45¢ | 38¢ |
| Georgia | 45% | 47¢ | 43¢ |
| Miami (FL) | 41% | 41¢ | 40¢ |
| LSU | 35% | 25¢ | 24¢ |
| Ole Miss | 25% | 24¢ | 20¢ |
| Iowa | 23% | 17¢ | none |
| Florida | 23% | 22¢ | 8¢ |
| Oregon | 21% | 20¢ | 13¢ |
| SMU | 20% | 22¢ | none |
Iowa and SMU are the tell. Both show a chance in the twenties built on a last trade, with nothing underneath either of them. A screen halves a one-sided quote and prints a number on a contract nobody will buy from you.
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Rows That Cannot Be True
A semifinalist is by definition also a qualifier, so no row here can price above the same team's price to make the twelve-team field.
On September 13 19 rows broke that rule. Eighteen were the same artifact: a 20-to-25-cent semifinal offer with no bid under it, halved by the screen into a number larger than the team's real quote on the other board.
Oklahoma was the only one a trader could act on, because it had a live bid on both boards. Clemson sat at no bid against 25 on the semifinal and 4/8 on the qualifier. Its semifinal offer had been 8 cents before the step-back.
Where The Prices Came From
This did not happen gradually. In the minute ending at 2:32 a.m. ET on September 13, the offer side stepped back on 49 of the 50 contracts at once.
Ohio State's offer went from 49 cents to 63 while the bid sat still at 42. TCU's went from 7 to 25. Clemson's went from 8 to 20, then to 25 half an hour later. No game was on and no news broke. Three of the 49 rows printed a trade in the window, 234 contracts across the whole board, and none of them were Ohio State's.
One bid moved that night, eight cents of it, and it belonged to Texas, the team that had beaten No. 1 Ohio State 24-23 a few hours earlier. That was the only opinion anybody expressed.
LSU was the single row that did not widen, and the reason was sitting underneath it: 943 contracts resting on the 30-cent bid. Its offer was thin, 30 contracts at the touch, no thicker than Ohio State's. Nobody moved it anyway, because real money was standing right below. At the time LSU held more than 90 percent of everything this market had ever traded.
The Bye Is Not A Prize
Six models priced this board on August 23, and all six built their numbers the same way: the chance of a top-four seed times a one-game conversion rate near 57 to 60 percent. The format is designed to reward exactly that.
The two completed brackets say otherwise. In 2024 the four bye teams were Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State, and all four lost their quarterfinals. Every semifinalist came from the group that had played a first-round game a week earlier. A year later the byes went to Georgia, Indiana, Ohio State and Texas Tech, and only Indiana converted.
One for eight. Every model on the panel assumed something closer to five.
How To Read It
Read the bid, not the midpoint. On a board where most rows have no bid, the midpoint is an arithmetic artifact of an empty half, and it errs in the direction that flatters the longshot.
Check depth before you believe a price. A 42-cent bid backed by 0.59 of a contract is not a market's opinion. It is one order nobody has cancelled.
Watch the spread, not the level. A one-cent market is somebody trading. An eight-cent market on the same board is somebody waiting, and the middle of it is a number no one has agreed to.
Semifinal and qualification figures read September 21, 2026, with the September 13 comparison from this page's own earlier read. Model verdicts generated August 23, 2026, price-blind. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
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